a ’90s or noughties-era fast four-wheel-drive car than the more modern, actively torque-vectored ones of the past decade or so. Because it’s so small, it really responds to being thrown into corners keenly on a trailing throttle, rotating particularly quickly and keenly in slippery conditions. But thereafter it’s more interested in putting its power down and carrying speed than in dancing around on an apex.
That might make it a less enticing track car in some ways than certain rivals (see Track Notes, below), but it certainly makes it well-suited to road driving: albeit road driving done with plenty of speed.
The driveline delivers superb sure-footedness, and just a little bit of drive-related handling impetus, as you wring that engine out in the shorter intermediate gears through longer corners, and feel the outside wheels keeping you unshakably on line.
Toyota’s latest suspension settings make for a slightly tetchy, brusque, over-damped-feeling low-speed ride, which only begins to smooth out at fairly serious cross-country speeds, though. Earlier GR Yarises felt more dynamically versatile and better-suited to tackling a mix of UK roads at pace. This one has the slightly grabby vertical body control, thumpy secondary ride, tetchy damping and animated, unfiltered steering of, say, a Renault Clio Cup.
But the GR Yaris’s chassis does come into its own when the car is given its head – which, with performance of this order, isn’t such an unconscionable prospect as it might be with other modern driver’s cars, when its body control is unflappable, and traction and stability are both very good indeed.
Track notes - 4 stars
Toyota’s dynamic development of the GR Yaris would seem to have diverted it from its original brief a little, as an any-weather, any-surface, Tarmac-or-gravel performance car, and towards sharper dedicated track handling. Whether you consider that good or bad will depend on your particular tastes, but also on how you prefer to use your own car.
Admitting that developmental direction of travel as if it were a statement of fact, however, you would have to recognise the effectiveness of the adjustment. The GR Yaris certainly handles on track like a faster, grippier and more capable performance car than it did when it first appeared.
It still feels higher-sided and loftier in its roll axis than most natural track cars, and so it leans on its outside wheels fairly hard when cornering. It has good ultimate roll control and corning support, however – preventing those outside wheels from getting overwhelmed when the car is laterally loaded, keeping grip levels fairly evenly balanced and allowing you to charge hard into braking areas, carry lots of apex speed and pour on the power early without fear that the car will run wide.
If you prefer having fun to going fast for its own sake, the GR Yaris is quite hard to cajole to positive cornering attitudes during dry running, with its Torsen diffs working hard to keep the wheels in line. In the wet, however, the chassis is quick to yaw, and fairly easy to drive straight again, though it doesn’t like to sit in longer, settled drifts with opposite lock applied.
